Do your players feel into the campaign setting you’re running, or is it just generic D&D world #124 to them? What can you do to bring that world more to life and make it feel unique to you and your players? What makes a D&D session feel like more than just a glorified board game?
With about a half dozen campaigns running between the 3 of us, making each of those worlds and settings feel unique is important (especially with Strahd running around in two of them). Over the years, we’ve built up a bunch of description techniques, mechanics and tricks to try to give our settings just the right amount of detail to feel alive without overwhelming the players with architectural dissertations.
Here are 37 of the tricks the 3 Wise DMs use to try to make the players feel immersed in our worlds and give the settings some soul. If you can think of any to add, leave a comment or write us at 3wisedms@gmail.com.
2:00 Do the Drow have clown schools? — Setting ideas that … appeal to us
5:00 Why it’s important to make players feel the tone of a setting
6:00 Trick 1: Keep your descriptions brief but memorable — pick one detail you want to make sure the players remember
9:00 Trick 2: What does this look like in the game? Think about how players will interact and the why behind what things look and act like
12:00 Trick 3: What am I playing? High fantasy needs different descriptions and details than horror or other types of games
14:00 Trick 4: Deep logic: Why pull historical details into a high-fantasy game where you could do “whatever you want” (and why what you make up may feel less fantastical than the historical detail)
16:00 Trick 5: Using “generic” fantasy tropes to set up unique twists and subversions
18:00 Trick 6: Don’t introduce things you won’t be able to give the attention they need (i.e., why Beta Ray Bill didn’t make it into The Avengers movies)
20:00 Trick 7: Start your description small and let the players ask for the details they care about
22:00 Trick 8: Curse of Strahd’s Baby Walter Returns! Don’t be afraid to steal plot ideas the players throw out that you didn’t think of — use them to hook that player
26:00 Trick 9: From Spartacus to Plato’s Utopia: Steal smart and without shame
29:00 Trick 10: Be careful not to design so much you can’t run it effectively
30:00 Trick 11: Do spend time building the unique, cool things that players will interact with often
32:00 Trick 12: Why highly magical campaigns where you fly/teleport/space travel often leave players feeling disconnected from the day-to-day worlds their characters are in
35:00 Trick 13: The timing of your sessions should impact your level of detail — monthly games don’t have room or attention for details like a weekly game
39:00 Trick 14: You can’t horny bard your way through Barovia — showing the players what works and what doesn’t in your campaign setting
42:00 Trick 15: How to teach D&D players to be afraid in a Call of Cthulhu game
49:00 Trick 16: If your setting is in our world or historic, search online for real photos and records to show it
50:00 Trick 17: How and when to use an unkillable monster to teach the players to run away
53:00 Trick 18: Like they noted in the original Ravenloft module, horror is tough to convey when everyone is sitting around eating chips
55:00 Trick 19: Skill check difficulty is its own kind of horror
56:00 Trick 20: Know when a too-easy fight could ruin the adventure
58:00 Trick 21: Limiting technology (or turning it to evil) can enhance horror
60:00 Trick 22: How secrets and PC insignificance make Call of Cthulhu feel different
63:00 Trick 23: Modern settings require the highest suspension of disbelief — unless you take them off-world
64:00 Trick 24: Why most Marvel RPGs are set in the ‘80s, even when they’re in the “present-day”
65:00 Trick 25: Establish your difficulty level at the start of the campaign. What level qualifies as “high level” in this world?
66:00 Trick 26: How to pace and benchmark level in your world
68:00 Trick 27: Slave collars: The new player railroad! (Make sure you discuss the situation beforehand and everyone wants to play in it)
70:00 Trick 28: Reskin spells to look different in places like Barovia
72:00 Trick 29: Understand that the dice can roll for the players or against the players at any time
74:00 Trick 30: How available is magic in the world and what does it look like? If a player wants to get a magic item, do they need to go home and buy it, or go out in the wilderness and find it?
77:00 Trick 31: You decide what’s going to be important to the players: Are you making them count rations? Ammunition? Does money even matter to PCs in your world?
78:00 Trick 32: Counting sanity and honor dramatically change the tone of a setting
80:00 Trick 33: What kind of benchmarks are you showing the players so they can see where they stand?
81:00 Trick 34: Involved item lists make players love shopping
82:00 Trick 35: Use skill challenges to reinforce the environment and break up the action
83:00 Trick 36: Death Curse
85:00 Trick 37: If players have an easy-solution spell (like Goodberry to overcome starvation) let it work, but make them do it and describe it so the challenge of the setting isn’t overlooked
90:00 Final thoughts